International Contemporary Ensemble Presents Douglas R. Ewart in 'Songs and Stories of Hopes, Dreams and Visions' at Chelsea Factory on March 17 & 18

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PR Contact: Leah Rankin | Morahan Arts and Media
leah@morahanartsandmedia.com | (646) 378-9386

International Contemporary Ensemble Presents Douglas R. Ewart in
Songs and Stories of Hopes, Dreams and Visions
at Chelsea Factory on March 17 & 18

Featuring Two World Premieres Commissioned and
Performed by International Contemporary Ensemble

www.iceorg.org

New York, NY (February 21, 2023) — In the first concert curated by Artistic Director George Lewis as part of his visionary polyaspora theme, International Contemporary Ensemble presents Songs and Stories of Hopes, Dreams and Visions, a concert of the music of composer and interdisciplinary artist Douglas R. Ewart. This concert features world premiere performances of two Ewart works - Marcus Mosiah Garvey and Songs and Stories of Hopes, Dreams and Visions - commissioned by the Ensemble on Friday, March 17 and Saturday, March 18, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. at Chelsea Factory.

Douglas R. Ewart’s featured works are dedicated to people and organizations that have greatly inspired his creativity: Truth is Power, dedicated to Fannie Lou Hamer, Ida B. Wells, and Dolores Huerta; Marcus Mosiah Garvey, dedicated to the political visionary, entrepreneur, journalist, orator, publisher, philosopher and international Black human rights activist and leader; Homage to George Floyd, in tribute to “others who have experienced a similar fate”; and Ascending Auditory Communications Migrating, dedicated to the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Ewart will join the Ensemble on sopranino saxophone as well as several Ewart designed and constructed instruments including the George Floyd Bunt Staff, Didjeridu, Ewartophone and Bone Flute.

In January 2023 International Contemporary Ensemble celebrated its 20th Anniversary by announcing what co-founder Claire Chase called an “electrifying new era” for the Ensemble, commissioning new works and exploring opportunities to invest in collaborations with new artists around the theme of polyaspora, spearheaded by George Lewis.

The idea of “polyaspora” comes from Adrian Tchaikovsky’s 2021 novel “Shards of Earth,” which describes a future condition of human dispersal throughout our galaxy. Under such a condition, there is no “home,” only flows, from everywhere and in all directions: not a diaspora, but what Tchaikovsky calls a “polyaspora.” Leaving fixed genre labels behind, our intercultural, intermedial, and interdisciplinary polyaspora is conscious, collaborative, creolized, and connected across borders of aesthetics, practices, gender, ethnicity, race, and transnational formations.

In the 21st Century, as our Ensemble enters its 21st year as a forward-thinking collective of musicians, composers, media artists, producers, and educators, what we seek is a new consciousness, a new identity for new music, creating a new world of what composer Courtney Bryan calls the “yet unheard” through a never-ending process of investigation and discovery that offers not just diversity, but a new complexity.

Concert Information:

DOUGLAS R. EWART: SONGS AND STORIES OF HOPES, DREAMS AND VISIONS
International Contemporary Ensemble
Douglas R. Ewart, composer
Friday, March 17, 2023 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 18, 2023 at 7:30 p.m.
Chelsea Factory | 547 West 26th Street, New York, NY, 10001
Tickets: $15-$20
Link: https://iceorg.org/events/2023/3/douglas-r-ewart

Program to Include:
Douglas R. Ewart - Untitled
Douglas R. Ewart - Ascending Auditory Communications Migrating
Douglas R. Ewart - Homage to George Floyd
Douglas R. Ewart - Marcus Mosiah Garvey (World Premiere)
Douglas R. Ewart - Songs and Stories of Hopes, Dreams and Visions (World Premiere)
Douglas R. Ewart - Truth is Power

Performers:
Rebekah Heller, bassoon
Nathan Davis, percussion
Clara Warnaar, percussion
Wendy Richman, viola
Aliya Ultan, cello
Douglas R. Ewart, sopranino saxophone, and Ewart designed and constructed instruments: George Floyd Bunt Staff, Didjeridu, Ewartophone and Bone Flute

About Douglas R. Ewart

Douglas R. Ewart, Professor Emeritus at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1946. Professor Ewart immigrated to Chicago in 1963, where he studied music theory at VanderCook College of Music, electronic music at Governors State University, and composition at the School of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Professor Ewart served as the organization's president between 1979 and 1987.

Professor Ewart’s extremely varied and highly interdisciplinary work encompasses music composition (including graphic and conceptual scores as well as conventionally notated works), painting and kinetic sound sculpture, communitarian conceptual performances in streets and parks, and multi-instrumental performance on virtually the full range of saxophones, flutes, and woodwinds, including the flutes, pan-pipes, rainsticks, and percussion instruments of his own design and construction for which he is known worldwide. Professor Ewart’s work has long reflected his understanding of the importance of sustainable and natural materials, particularly bamboo, which serves as primary physical materials for many of his sculptures and instruments.

Professor Ewart’s compositions have been presented worldwide. His visual works have been shown at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Ojai Festival, Art Institute of Chicago, Institute for Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, and many others. Ewart has received Bush Artists Fellowships, McKnight Fellowships, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and others.

Professor Ewart’s life and his wide-ranging work have always been inextricably associated with Jamaican culture, history, politics, and the land itself. Ewart is the recipient of the silver Musgrave Award 2019, one of Jamaica’s highest awards for the arts sciences and literature. His father, Tom Ewart, was one of cricket’s most internationally celebrated professional umpires, eventually earning induction into the Cricket Hall of Fame. His aunt, Iris King, was a leading member of Norman Manley’s People’s National Party, and later, the first woman mayor in Jamaica.

About International Contemporary Ensemble
With a commitment to cultivating a more curious and engaged society through music, the International Contemporary Ensemble – as a commissioner and performer at the highest level – amplifies creators whose work propels and challenges how music is made and experienced. The Ensemble’s 39 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored the Ensemble’s programming since its founding in 2001, and the group’s recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music’s present.

Described as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), the Ensemble has become a leading force in new music throughout the last 20 years, having premiered over 1,000 works and having been a vehicle for the workshop and performance of thousands of works by student composers across the U.S. The Ensemble’s composer-collaborators—many who were unknown at the time of their first Ensemble collaboration—have fundamentally shaped its creative ethos and have continued to highly visible and influential careers, including MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey; long-time Ensemble collaborator, founding member, and 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winner Du Yun; and the Ensemble’s founder, 2012 MacArthur Fellow, and first-ever flutist to win Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Prize, Claire Chase.

A recipient of the American Music Center’s Trailblazer Award and the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the International Contemporary Ensemble was also named Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year in 2014. The group has served as artists-in-residence at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival (2008-2020), Ojai Music Festival (2015-17), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2010-2015). In addition, the Ensemble has presented and performed at festivals in the U.S. such as Big Ears Festival and Opera Omaha’s ONE Festival, as well as abroad, including GMEM-Centre National de Création Musicale (CNCM) de Marseille, Vértice at Cultura UNAM, Warsaw Autumn, International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, and Cité de la Musique in Paris. Other performance stages have included the Park Avenue Armory, ice floes at Greenland’s Diskotek Sessions, Brooklyn warehouses, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and boats on the Amazon River.

The International Contemporary Ensemble advances music technology and digital communications as an empowering tool for artists from all backgrounds. Digitice provides high-quality video documentation for artist-collaborators and provides access to an in-depth archive of composers’ workshops and performances. The Ensemble regularly engages new listeners through free concerts and interactive, educational programming with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Curricular activities include a partnership at The New School’s College of Performing Arts (CoPA), along with a summer intensive program, called Ensemble Evolution, where topics of equity, diversity, and inclusion build new bridges and pathways for the future of creative sound practices. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the Ensemble. Read more at www.iceorg.org and watch over 350 videos of live performances and documentaries at www.digitice.org.

The International Contemporary Ensemble’s performances and commissioning activities during the 2022-23 concert season are made possible by the generous support of many individuals as well as the Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., MAP Fund, Mid Atlantic Arts, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, The Cheswatyr Foundation, Amphion Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, New Music USA’s Organizational Development Fund, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, BMI Foundation, as well as public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) from the U.S. Small Business Administration. The International Contemporary Ensemble was the Ensemble in Residence of the Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology from 2018-2021. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the International Contemporary Ensemble.

About Chelsea Factory
Chelsea Factory exists to support artists and audiences as we collectively navigate beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. With an emphasis on support for New York City-based artists, Chelsea Factory provides highly subsidized creation and presentation space, production resources, and dynamic connections that create transformative experiences for its partners across genres. Chelsea Factory was founded by Jim Herbert, Founder and Executive Chairman of First Republic Bank, with significant support from the First Republic Foundation. As a pop-up project with a finite organizational life, Chelsea Factory remains a collaborative and noncompetitive resource to the partners it serves, as well as a place for New Yorkers to find connection, inspiration, and joy. To learn more, visit ChelseaFactory.org.

Photo at top of release by Moly Miles

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